I have no doubt that Alan and I have very different memories of what
happened in CA given that we were both heavily involved in opposite sides. Someday
we'll have to sit down and compare notes. I find it interesting that
objections by the DOC are "political" rather than policy, but that's an issue for
another day.
I was only responding to the thread about child custody when I mentioned
that one of the elements that undermined the CA RFRA was opposition by those
dealing with children's issues. I'd have to go dig it up from my files, but I
believe there was a letter from judges who opposed RFRA because of its affect
on children. In any event, my point was that there was a perception in CA
that RFRA would alter the previous balance of power between parents in favor of
the religious believer, or the more active practitioner.
There is no question that there were other elements involved in the CA
RFRA's failure as well, but they were irrelevant to the thread at the time.
Marci
In a message dated 1/5/2008 12:27:38 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
aebrownstein at ucdavis.edu writes:
This may be a good example why it is hard to figure out why laws get passed
or do not get passed. I was heavily involved in trying to get RFRA enacted
in CA. I would not suggest as Marci does that the CA RFRA "never made it
anywhere" since it passed both houses of the legislature -- only to be vetoed by
Governor Pete Wilson.
As to the reasons why Wilson vetoed the bill, I had never heard that civil
rights issues or child justice issues were particularly important reasons for
Wilson's decision. If Marci or Marc have more information on what led to
Wilson's veto, I would be really interested in hearing about it since I spent so
much time working on the bill and was dismayed when the veto came down.
For whatever my recollection is worth (this was over ten years ago), I think
the backers of the bill thought that concerns about zoning were part of the
problem (the League of Cities and other groups strongly opposed RFRA) but
that the major reason for the veto was opposition by the Department of
Corrections and the Correctional Officers.
Given the record of various votes on various versions of RFRA bills in CA
(many legislators voted for a broad RFRA bill requiring strict scrutiny review
one year , but against a RFRA bill limited to land use that required
intermediate level scrutiny a year or two later), I think it would hard to argue that
policy, as opposed to politics, had anything to do with the results in this s
tate.
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